Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | registeredcorn's commentslogin

Without going into an exceptionally long rant: bad and angry.

There is no aspect about it that I enjoy.


Supposing your assertion is correct, isn't it equally plausible that "we" are constantly addressing how impossible it is to be noticed on here, but "we" also are not noticing it because it is impossible to be noticed? :)


> What on earth do you do with that many devs on a project like Messenger?

The pessimist in me says that at least part of the intent isn't about what they do, but rather about who they work for.

Assume you can afford to hire unnecessary amounts of employees. Is it more cost effective to:

a) Hire them and have them essentially sit around, floundering

b) Not hire them, allowing competitors the chance to hire them to work on something that could be of importance

Sure, you could hire them and devote them to working on other projects, but there are also risks and costs associated with that. If you have already budgeted with X, Y, and Z for however many quarters, it may not make good sense to green light additional projects. Too many balls in the air adds extra complexity for middle management, which impacts their ability to communicate the state of things to upper management.

Reduce access to resources available to the enemy by hoarding what you can. When the stock price looks like it might take a hit, toss the excess.


> and it has a repairability score of 9/10 from ifixit

Do you mean a 6/10? The only score I saw for the neo on iFixIt is here: https://www.ifixit.com/News/116152/macbook-neo-is-the-most-r...

I checked the "Laptop repairability scores" page and the Neo doesn't appear to be listed. https://www.ifixit.com/repairability/laptop-repairability-sc...


They mean the Lenovo laptop has a 9/10 repairability, not the Apple Neo.


Ah, my mistake. Thanks!


> The ones which are truly local end up in a "call us to know more" button, no pricing info disclosed.

I cannot speak for the specific part of Europe that you are in, but in the professional Photography community, it is common practice to not list prices and instead have a "contact us" option. The reason isn't a, "Look at us, we're so exclusive and fancy!" Rather, if you list a price for various packages, people get scared off or think they are a master negotiator and can essentially get the work done for free. All of the professionals I've spoken to are happy to work with customers to find a package at an affordable price for them, or at least recommend other professionals in whatever price range they have in mind. The issue is that its exceptionally hard to convey that in a sincere, real way because if someone only sees a price of say $10 000 or whatever, they are naturally going to assume that you cannot possibly get anything for $100-$1 000.

In truth though, many are glad to try and accommodate and get people something that they will be happy with. Perhaps it ends up being 1 or 2 photos instead of an album of photos or whatever, or perhaps the photoshoot is a little bit more "low budget" than a standard one, but there is still lots of opportunity to get the client something they will be happy with. People tend to get wrapped up in the bottom line though, and just assume that they can't afford to capture a happy memory because of the cost - that's something that photographers really want to avoid because (aside from scaring off paying customers! :) ) it means less photos existing, or making it feel impossibly hard to ever show an interest in photography, which is very sad for people who live and breath it.


> Rather, if you list a price for various packages, people get scared off

Yet somehow other businesses manage to convey tiered pricing without scaring customers.

Imagine trying to book a hotel room but were told to contact them because they have a range of rooms from single bed to honeymoon suite. "We couldn't possibly list all the packages, it would confuse you!"

Or try to buy a car, but the dealer refused to list a base price because "we have so many options it's meaningless".

Withholding guideline or indicative pricing is a deliberate obfuscation designed to increase friction and reduce choice.


> Being genuinely interested and sharing experiences and common interests and learning from each other are good reasons though.

(Not OP, but interested to hear more)

In terms of motivation, do you know of a way to begin a sincere and genuine interest in others that doesn't have some ulterior motivations? That may sound kind of mechanical, but what I mean is roughly something like: "I don't know people, so I do not have any 'genuine interest' in them. As a result, any interest that I do have is insincere."

I chose not to have friends for several decades, which has been extremely convenient for the most part, except for tasks that require more than one person, or work-related situations. Not having to worry about offending people, remembering birthdays, messing up my own plans for the needs of others, etc. was very burdensome. However, being able to use people as a job reference, or getting leads on future opportunities from people I used to work with would also be beneficial so I can understand why people would expend the effort. However, retaining a friendship solely for those job-related purposes seems grossly manipulative because there is no sincerity in what I want from them. I do not want them I only want to extract what they can give to me.

Is it simply understood that, if you make friends with someone as an adult, it is inherently with ulterior motivations in mind, whether it be to avoid loneliness, get work-related benefits, or extract knowledge from them? As a child, I think people tended to make friends simply because they were bored and the person seemed neat. Is that why people still try to make friends with people?


A genuine relationship is not transactional. I never expect anything out of a friend, or anyone really. I will simply give them my time, advice, or help because I choose to with zero motivation beyond it making me happy to know I could help someone in some way. I have limits, of course, but I never expect anything in return. It is as simple as that. Some of the time I ask friends for help or they offer it. I don't expect it or do anything in particular to encourage things out of them. A good friendship revolves around the common ground in that space. You like working on cars. You like talking about it and spending time on it. They like the same things. So you spend time on that thing together for no particular reason other than it being more interesting to do with another person.

We live in industrialized society, it is highly dependent on a vast ecosystem of other humans doing specialized jobs. To have a genuine interest you just decide to have one. Why do people choose the hobbies they do. Why this software project over that one. Why do some people like this car or that other car. What motivates people. If you ask people will almost universally be happy to tell you about things they care about. You don't need any particular reason. The fact that you are on HN indicates you at least nominally are interested in others.

I think some rare people genuinely are just happier off in a cabin in the woods, mostly independent of other humans, but we are generally not evolved that way. We simply have a vast amount of chemical and mental machinery dedicated to experiencing life as a social construct and system. Also, having friends to avoid loneliness is that exact machinery we evolved. It isn't required in any logical sense, but in a very real physical sense our bodies and minds reward us for socializing.


> A genuine relationship is not transactional

But helping other people often brings happiness on its own.


That is kind of the point. Doing something for no extrinsic reward. It is a part of practicing gratitude and expecting nothing in return (from the other person). If you experience genuine joy or happiness from helping others I think you are doing alright :)

I helped because I could and I wanted to. It makes me happy to help other people. Happy is a loaded word anyway. What is happiness? Some bits of chemicals in our brain? I have trained my reward function to be happy for something it gets no real material or survival benefit from. Maybe it thinks it is getting some benefit in my default mode network. I help people and they will help me? I am sure the DMN sets forth that narrative at some level. But there is a deeper trick to all of it in which I know there is often no survival or conscious narrative benefit. I just did a pro social human thing. Maybe the hormones that generates are enough to convince my DMN to keep doing it? Maybe if you wire your empathy centers deeply enough to experience things through other people you can convince your DMN it is valuable. IDK how it works, I do meditate on it. But mostly it is just about connection and helping people on their journey through life as countless others have helped me. I figure if I end it with having helped others more than I was helped that's a pretty good score. Sort of like the seinfeld quote about driving a porsche: Having the lowest mileage Porsche when reaching heaven signifies a failure to enjoy life, which is considered one of life's greatest sins?

something like that maybe? Who knows. I am going to keep putting help others mileage out there until my time is up, I am very fortunate in this life.


You need to go to therapy and speak to a professional about this. Choosing to not have social connections is a deeply anti-human behavior, we were evolved to be social creatures after all.

Maybe you are truly asocial, but you come across as someone severely stunted emotionally if you think companionship means always extracting value out of someone.


Your primary motivation for having a friend is that you enjoy being with them and talking to them. thats it.


Most people want to spend time with others in the same kind of way they want to eat food or sleep or watch a movie. It just seems to be built in. People who appear to have ulterior motives are treated suspiciously. Some people seem to need a lot more social time than others, but most people desire at least a little bit of human contact.


I'm not arguing with what you're saying, but it does make me wonder: What exactly is the point of the status page, if "it is normal for users to already see errors before GitHub officially counts it as an outage"?

Is it more so to have something to link to for managers who aren't using the service have a pretty bar to look at and feel like they are "doing something"? Or is it more of a kind of a way to prevent confirming what you already suspect to be true. E.g. "Huh. Me and Jim are seeing problems. How about you Tom? Oh wait, crud. The service page is confirming it's down now. Never mind! Who wants coffee?!"


There is oddly enough a middle ground between "zero errors whatsoever" and "outage".


Do not vote on this comment! I am a server! :)


>I found it extremely entertaining.

Forgive me for being nitpicky, but I think that is the entire point that they were making. Entertaining, but not informative. Fun, but not well-argued.

Example: I can be extremely engaged while listening to a stand-up comedian deliver an anecdote about why they believe what they believe. It can be incredibly interesting, engaging, and well put. It is not, however, an argument which supports their assertions, but merely a conduit which makes that position more palatable.

Insight is often dreary and frustratingly complex in terms of nuance and substance because what matters is everything, and what doesn't makes headlines. Entertainment is a broad stroke of a premise; a hand wave that says "like this".


It was a history of anti- intellectualism in the US. I'm not sure what kind of argument they should be making.


Let me nitpick the nitpick: we're in an attention economy and it's all to easy to have something salient dismissed with TLDR/TLDW. A more cursory glance that makes it easier to ease into a concept is more important than the subject matter expert making an ironclad argument that no one reads.

In the context of the internet forum, that was an appropriate video to post.


> I think that is the entire point that they were making. Entertaining, but not informative. Fun, but not well-argued.


Thanks for missing my point. Informative doesn't win over as many minds in this day and age. Staying principled in a land of grifts only gets you torn apart.


You're welcome.


If there were a caveat for something like that, like say, "adult supervision for minors is required. Transfer between legal guardians is permitted, provided they can prove ..." or some kind of language like that.

Are there other common cases that would apply? I assume there are probably some other situations, but I can't think of what they might be. I also find it hard to understand why a little bit of leeway couldn't be baked into the language of the transferable nature under certain circumstances. Presumably the venue wants people to have a good time so they will want to come back again and again, right?

Perhaps something as easy as "If one friend can't make it, you can give it to a different friend." Then, at the door, the guards can look at the ID of someone and ask basic questions; "What is (person)'s name? What town does (person) live in?" Etc.


So how do those rules work, exactly?

How do we even prove that the kids are kids? How do we prove that the kids even exist?

> or some kind of language like that.

There's nothing accomplished here but handwaving and added burden.

---

> Perhaps something as easy as "If one friend can't make it, you can give it to a different friend." Then, at the door, the guards can look at the ID of someone and ask basic questions; "What is (person)'s name? What town does (person) live in?" Etc.

In this second scenario, scalping goes like this: "For sale: Two tickets to $hot_show. Entry instructions provided upon delivery."

And then the buyer buys the tickets at whatever that price is, and goes to the show. They give their ID, the "guards" ask them basic questions, and they answer those questions. After that, they get turned loose inside like every other concert-goer.

This is just handwaving and extra burden, as well.

---

Unless... unless we make it totally Gestapo-like. Because the best part of going to see a show is the lengthy interrogation that happens beforehand. (If the goal is to make shows less popular, then this is a sure-fire way to improve that metric!)


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: